Deutsch
English
"At a first glance 'Volunteer' is not a very attractive book. It is as much exciting as a walk in a commercial estate in the suburb of a modern city. When you first read it, it goes pretty fast from a page to another, and the book is finished before you really understand its purpose, but the pictures have started to enter your mind and therefore, you come back to the book, and look at it again, slower, then again and again and you start to become obsessed, trying to understand the sequencing, to find some recognition elements, but in vain. The photographs depict boredom with a very high aesthetics value." (Christer Ek, source: http://whoneedsanotherphotoblog.wordpress.com/2014/01/18/when-landscape-photography-becomes-a-political-statement-volunteer-by-paul-seawright/)
"V'olunteer' is a survey of sorts, photographs from today's fraying, centreless post 9-11 North American cities. Each photograph made at the location of a military recruiting station, where a different battle is being fought – to find young men and women to volunteer for service in Afghanistan. Starting in Texas, the highest recruiting state in the US, Seawright visited over 500 military recruitment offices in fifteen states. These new works comment not just on the ongoing war and the battle to recruit new soldiers, but the contemporary North American city, a landscape littered with thrift stores, gun dealerships, fast food outlets, nightclubs, car dealerships beneath super-sized American flags, strip malls and pawn shops. It is in these spaces on the margins of small towns and cities that the recruiters look to find the volunteers of tomorrow.
Southern states account for 36 percent of the nation's young adults, according to the Department of Defense, but provide 41 percent of the nation's recruits. Texas is the top state in the South, supplying about 10 percent of military enlistees each year. The services sign up between 280,000 and 300,000 new soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines annually and, typically have little problem hitting their numbers. In 2010, for the first time, the four largest branches of the armed forces- the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines, comfortably exceeded their recruiting goals. About 99 percent of enlistees have a high school diploma, and scores on the military entrance exam are the highest in the history of the all-volunteer force."
"V'olunteer' is a survey of sorts, photographs from today's fraying, centreless post 9-11 North American cities. Each photograph made at the location of a military recruiting station, where a different battle is being fought – to find young men and women to volunteer for service in Afghanistan. Starting in Texas, the highest recruiting state in the US, Seawright visited over 500 military recruitment offices in fifteen states. These new works comment not just on the ongoing war and the battle to recruit new soldiers, but the contemporary North American city, a landscape littered with thrift stores, gun dealerships, fast food outlets, nightclubs, car dealerships beneath super-sized American flags, strip malls and pawn shops. It is in these spaces on the margins of small towns and cities that the recruiters look to find the volunteers of tomorrow.
Southern states account for 36 percent of the nation's young adults, according to the Department of Defense, but provide 41 percent of the nation's recruits. Texas is the top state in the South, supplying about 10 percent of military enlistees each year. The services sign up between 280,000 and 300,000 new soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines annually and, typically have little problem hitting their numbers. In 2010, for the first time, the four largest branches of the armed forces- the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines, comfortably exceeded their recruiting goals. About 99 percent of enlistees have a high school diploma, and scores on the military entrance exam are the highest in the history of the all-volunteer force."
- Format
- HC (no dust jacket, as issued), 21 x 27 x 1,5 cm., 64 pp., text language: English, Ltd. to 850 copies